Government walks away from talks on critical harm reduction measure in Canadian prisons

TORONTO, January 17, 2017 — In a profoundly disappointing move by a government that claims to support harm reduction and “evidence-based policies,” the Government of Canada has withdrawn from a planned mediation, preferring to waste more money on lawyers to fight evidence-based harm reduction services in prisons. Meanwhile, prisoners will continue to needlessly contract preventable infections, at serious cost to both Canadian public health efforts and the public purse.